On "Online Learning" - the workload, how it's structured differently from in-person courses, and how I stay organized for my online course
I was talking to my brother this past weekend about online learning because he is also taking online classes for an undergraduate degree in Geology. As I mentioned I'm getting a Certificate of Management, which is why I'm currently enrolled in an online course.
The Online Course Workload - same, more, or less than in-person courses?
Some of the things my brother and I talked about was workload. It seems he has considerably less per week in his 8-week long 100 level history and psych courses than I do in my 10-week long management 101 course. On a weekly basis, he has textbook reading, one assignment to complete (textbook questions), one quiz, and he has to respond to three other classmates. He also has one class project.
For my course, we have discussion questions, learning activities, case studies, "cool sites" to check out and report on, a "leadership spotlight" to review and report on, chapter reading, and a blog post, plus quizzes, a project, and a research paper to work on. Then we have to comment on classmates' posts in the discussion forums as part of the Class Participation grade.
My brother gave me a sidelong look when I listed my workload. Apparently MassBay is more rigorous than Southern New Hampshire University (which kind of makes me a little proud of my place of work, even if it makes me wonder why I elected to take a summer course...don't I know how much I love being at the beach???)
The Structure of an Online Course
It seems the strength of an online course really rests on the professor's comfort level with the platform and organization of the course. My brother's philosophy professor "didn't know what she was doing," and though he completed everything on time and received a good grade, he said he didn't feel he learned as much as with the history teacher who had everything well organized and made expectations and assignments clear. Same for my management class: it's well organized and the professor understands how to operate an online course well.
What's different is that you can get to class work on your own time. This is its benefit and its downfall, depending on the student. I'm a born procrastinator, so that's a bit dangerous for me. However, I'm also akin to Hermione Granger and strive to do well at all times, so I stay motivated that way.
The other structural difference is the physicality of everything. Because of costs, it was more affordable to have the textbook as an eBook instead. I have to say: I absolutely hate it! "Flipping" from one section to another when searching for an answer to the question is really cumbersome. Even though I downloaded the book to an iPad and have it stored in the iBooks, it's still takes forever to load if I need to flip from one section to another. And the search function is not helpful because it's just not as quick as my human brain could be, if I had the book in front of me and could get to the section I wanted and skim for the info I needed.
The differentiation has been noted in scientific studies, especially in regards to "slow reading."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/
The other problem I have is the age-old complaint about the cumbersome nature of Blackboard, which is the course management system for most online courses. I'll have read posts and it won't mark it as such. I'll try to go back to a previous thread and it it's so clunky trying to find out where it went because it will move it to the bottom since it's read. It's just awkward.
How I Stay Organized for My Online Course
Staying organized for an online course is one of the biggest challenges in taking the class, I think.(Apparently also for some who are teaching it, as stated above with my brother's philosophy professor.) My course has lots of requirements and keeping track of and meeting them all is the trick.
- I make every document for the course a draft in my MassBay Gmail account. I don't make it a doc in Google Drive because I don't want to have to log out of my personal gmail account in order to access my MassBay Google Drive account. But if I keep it in the "draft" email folder, I can access it, because you can login to multiple gmail accounts on one computer; you can't access multiple Drives. It's also good because then I can email it to my Ms Library Bridge gmail account for backup and record-keeping.
- At the beginning of the week, I go over what assignment are due by week's end. I copy and paste what the professor has posted for "Weekly Assignments" into a draft email on my MassBay gmail account to turn it into a to do list.
- After each assignment I make a note of when I plan to do it in bright blue courier font so it stands out as I review the list. I try to do the simpler things right off the bat. The more complicated things and things that take some time and thinking, I assign for later in the week. Things that need to get done after the reading, I put in the middle of the week. (Though middle of the week can go by the wayside on account of Ms Procrastinator taking charge, and sunshine and summer.)
- I take each assignment and create a draft for it. On a computer with a large monitor (the ones at work, not my little Chromebook), I copy and paste the text from the professor's post and paste them into the draft email with the assignment name in the subject box. I find doing this at the start of the week helps me see what I need to get done and also, once the text is copied and pasted, I don't have look through the folders of Blackboard more than once for what I'm looking for.
- I do the same thing for the eBook and the textbook questions we have to answer. Once I know what they are, I keep the ebook up on one side of the screen and the draft email version of the assignment on the other. I copy and paste the text of the questions and italicize them. I do this so that I don't have to "flip" in a virtual sense between the pages and the questions at the end of a long chapter. Last week I made the mistake of not doing this for a section of the Learning Activities. We had to find all this minute information and trying to "flip" from the multiple choice questions to the information in the book on my tiny screen and iPad was so frustrating. I gave up on my inner Hermione and just guessed by the end of it because I was too annoyed to keep trying. I won't be making that mistake again.